Embattled Michigan Falls to Rutgers

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — For a week, Michigan football had been the talk of the sports world, and for all the wrong reasons.

Not only had the team started the season 2-3, but the university was also embroiled in controversy after quarterback Shane Morris, who had sustained what Michigan later called a “probable mild concussion,” briefly returned to the field in last weekend’s loss to Minnesota.

On Saturday night, the situation grew worse, with Michigan losing to Rutgers, 26-24, as its defense struggled to stop the Scarlet Knights, whose quarterback, Gary Nova, threw for a career-best 404 yards.

Michigan trailed at halftime, 19-17, and limped through the third quarter before staging a late comeback. Rutgers, though, blocked a 56-yard field-goal attempt that would have put the Wolverines ahead in the game’s final minutes.

The loss, which dropped Michigan to 2-4 over all and 0-2 in the Big Ten, is likely to further rattle the team’s fans and intensify the criticism facing its coach, Brady Hoke.

After the game, Hoke applauded his players for sticking together through the adversity and said he hoped the fans would stick with them, too.

“They’ve been a team,” he said. “Now, have we been the type of team that they want us to be and we want to be? Believe me: No one wants to win more than those guys in the locker room.”

He added, “We know we’ve got to do our part.”

The game was the first in history between Michigan and Rutgers, with the Scarlet Knights (5-1, 1-1) earning their first win against a Big Ten opponent in their inaugural season in the conference. The victory also served as a sign that Rutgers, which narrowly lost to Penn State last month, can compete with some of the Big Ten’s traditional powers.

On Michigan’s side, though, the problems persist — and go beyond the team’s three consecutive losses.

Devin Gardner was back as Michigan’s starting quarterback. Morris, who made his first start of the season against Minnesota, dressed for the game but remained on the sideline, wearing a headset. He helped signal in plays, Hoke said.

After the game, Jake Ryan, a senior linebacker, said the players and the coaches were hanging together.

“We played our butts off today,” Ryan said, adding, “I love this team, and I love these coaches, and we’d do anything for each other.”

“Our system failed quarterback Shane Morris last week,” Darryl Conway, associate athletic director for student-athlete health and welfare, said in a statement before the game. “We never want that to happen again for a student-athlete.”

In Rutgers’s packed stadium, Michigan fans dotted the stands. Still, there was no denying that it had been a trying week for the program and its supporters, and the Rutgers fans seemed happy to remind their guests. Before the game, a sign in the parking lot read, “Hoke is a joke.”

On Monday, by which point the clip of Morris’s being hit and appearing wobbly had been replayed repeatedly, Hoke, Michigan’s fourth-year coach, defended himself in a news conference, saying that he could accept criticism of his coaching but that attacks on his “integrity and character” were unwarranted.

By early Tuesday morning, university officials acknowledged that Morris had probably sustained a concussion, along with a high ankle sprain, on the play.

Later that day, Michigan fans held a rally at the door of the university’s president, Mark S. Schlissel, and petitioned for the firing of Athletic Director Dave Brandon, who publicly stood by Hoke while admitting in a statement that there was “a serious lack of communication that led to confusion on the sideline.”

Brandon said the team’s coaches and medical staff on the sideline did not see the hit on Morris, which led to his staying in the game for a play and later re-entering the game for one play.

The handling of head injuries has been the subject of a national discussion, with both the N.C.A.A. and the N.F.L. being targeted with lawsuits. It is an especially pressing issue at Michigan, where researchers have used grant money to study concussions in recent years.

During the past week, Schlissel, the university president, said he felt “extreme disappointment” in the handling of Morris’s injury.

“Despite having one of the finest levels of team medical expertise in the country, our system failed on Saturday,” he said in a statement. “We did not get this right, and for this I apologize to Shane, his family, his teammates and the entire Michigan family.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SP, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Embattled Michigan Falls to Rutgers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe